Zillow’s Retsly acquisition no threat to MLSs

The recent news of Zillow’s acquisition of middleware provider Retsly evoked negative reactions from many agents at Inman Connect in San Francisco. In fact, Zillow CRO Greg Schwartz, who was onstage with Brad Inman, was forced to defend the move as some agents openly questioned it as a brazen attempt to morph Zillow into a multiple listing service.
In my view, the "Zillow-as-an-MLS" suspicions are unfounded. Sure, Zillow wants to dominate the real estate tech space (and its next acquisition may go a long way toward helping it get there). But the smart money says Zillow doesn’t need to become an MLS to do so.
Here’s why: Innovation in real estate technology has been slow relative to other industries. Some of this slowness may be due to unique market dynamics. But certainly anoth...